r EXIOTS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
JOHN HENRY NASH LIBRARY
<$> SAN FRANCISCO
PRESENTED TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
ROBERT GORDON SPROUL, PRESIDENT.
MR.ANDMRS.MILTON S.RAY
CECILY, VIRGINIA AND ROSALYN RAY
RAY OIL BURNER COMPANY
JOHN HENRY NASH
/t
A Collection of Quotations
Instructive and Sentimental
Gathered and Arranged by
JENNIE DAY HAINES
Decorations by SPENCER WRIGHT
Published by PAUL ELDER &
Co., San Francisco and New York
s
Copyright 1906, by
PAUL ELDER. AND COMPANY
So many interesting books have
been published of late about gardens
that it would seem as if the subject
were well nigh exhausted.
Notwithstanding that this is the
general opinion, one well versed in
garden-lore has sensibly written:
"As there must be many gardeners,
so there must be many books. There
must be books for different persons
and different ideals"
Hence, the compiler of this little
volume does not offer an apology to
the public for presenting it, but
rather to the neighbours whose at-
tractive gardens she has entered
without an invitation, and for
plucking a choice posy now and then
without permission.
JENNIE DAY HAINES.
What Is a Garden ?
The First Garden
Paradise
The Wondrous Gardens
Mediaeval Gardens
Monastic Gardens
Old-Fashioned Gardens
Old-Fashioned Flowers
Old English Gardens
Gardens of the Orient
Dutch Gardens
German Gardens
Italian Gardens
Spanish Gardens
National Flowers
The Garden of Childhood
Anent Gardeners
The Location for a Garden
The Garden in Spring
Autumn Flowers
White Flowers
Blue Flowers
The Rose
The Poppy
Concerning Seed
Weeds
Art in Gardens
Fountains -
The Sun-Dial
Women and Gardens -
Flowers and Books
Flower-Names
The Poet's Garden
Flowers for Thoughts
Garden Friendships
The Love of Flowers
The Gardens of the Poor
The Smell of a Garden
Gardens of the Sea
The Garden at Even
Garden Songs
Gardens of the Soul
91$ a
By a garden is meant mystically a place of spirit-
ual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.
Cardinal Newman.
The word garden is a never-ceasing delight, it
seems to me Oriental, — perhaps I have a transmitted
sense from my grandmother Eve of the Garden of
Eden> Alice Morse Earle.
A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot !
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern'd grot —
The veriest school
Of Peace ; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not —
Not God ! in gardens ! when the eve is cool ?
Nay, but I have a sign;
' Tis very sure God walks in mine.
Thomas Edward Brown.
Perhaps no word of six letters concentrates so
much human satisfaction as the word "garden."
Not accidentally, indeed, did the inspired writer
make Paradise a garden: and still to-day, when a
man has found all the rest of the world vanity, he
retires into his garden.
When man needs just one word to express in
rich and poignant symbol his sense of accumulated
beauty and blessedness, his first thought is of a gar-
den. The saint speaks of " The Garden of God."
" A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse," cries
the lover; or, "There is a garden in her face," he
sings; and the soldier's stern dream is of a " garden
of swords." The word " heaven" itself is hardly
universally expressive of human happiness
more
than the word "garden."
Richard Le Gallienne.
IswV^ttai^i^W''
If I were to choose a motto over the gate of a
garden, I should choose the remark which Socrates
made as he saw the luxuries in the market: "How
much there is in the world that I do not want!" *
L. H. Bailey
We have no reason to think that for many cen-
turies the term garden implied more than a kitchen-
garden or orchard. When a Frenchman reads of
the Garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he con-
cludes it was something approaching to that of Ver-
sailles, with dipt hedges, berceaus and trelliswork.
If his devotion humbles him so far as to allow that,
considering who designed it, there might be a laby-
rinth full of .flisop's fables, yet he does not conceive
that four of the largest rivers in the world were half
so magnificent as a hundred fountains full of statues
by Girardon. It is thus that the word garden has at
all times passed for whatever was understood by that
term in different countries. But that it meant no
more than a kitchen-garden or orchard for several
centuries, is evident from those few descriptions
that are preserved of the most famous gardens of
antiquity. Horace Walpole.
Gardening is practised for food's sake in a kitchen
and orchard, or for pleasure's sake in a green grass-
plot and an arbour. Johjj Amos Ctm€nitUf
Clje <fftt#t d&ar&en
God Almightie first planted a Garden * * * and
indeed it is the Purest of Humane Pleasures, it is
the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirits of Man.
Francis Bacon {Lord Verulam}.
It has always seemed to me that the punishment
of the first gardener and his wife was the bitterest
of all. To have lived always in a garden "where
grew every tree pleasant to the sight and good fpr
food," to have known no other place, and then to
have been driven forth into the great world without
hope of returning ! O Eve, had you not desired
wisdom, your happy children might still be tilling
the soil of that blessed Eden! * *. * And then, to
leave the lovely place at the loveliest of all times
in a garden, the cool of the day ! Faint sunset
hues tinting the sky, the night breeze gently stirring
the trees; lilies and roses giving their sweetest per-
fume, brilliant Venus mounting her accustomed path,
while the sleepy twitter of the birds alone break the
silence ! Then the voice of wrath, the Cherubim,
the turning flaming sword ! Helgn Ruthurford ^
A Garden was the habitation of our first parents
before the fall. It is naturally apt to fill the mind
with calmness and tranquillity, and to lay all its tur-
bulent passions at rest. It gives us a great insight
into the contrivance and wisdom of Providence, and
suggests innumerable subjects for meditation.
Joseph Addison.
The New Eden
When man provoked his mortal doom,
And Eden trembled as he fell,
When blossoms sighed their last perfume,
And branches waved their long farewell,
One sucker crept beneath the gate,
One seed was wafted o'er the wall,
One bough sustained his trembling weight —
These left the garden, — these were all.
And far o'er many a distant zone
The wrecks of Eden still are flung :
The fruits that Paradise hath known
Are still in earthly gardens hung.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
* * * Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champian head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied; and overhead up-grew
Insuperable hight of loftiest shade,
Cedar and Pine and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. *
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on hill and dale and plain.
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murm'ring waters fall
Down the slope hill, dispers'd or in a lake
. That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
John Milton.
I hold that the whole world was named a Para-
dise. Moses describes it according to Adam's sight,
so far as hee could see; but it was called Paradise
by reason it was all over so sweet and pleasant.
Adam was, and dwelled towards the East in Syria
and Arabia, when hee was created; but after he had
sinned, then it was no more so delightful and pleasant.
Even so in our time hath God cursed likewise
fruitful lands, and hath caused them to bee barren
and unfruitful by reason of our sins : for where God
gives not His blessing, there grows nothing that is
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good and profitable; but where He blesseth, there
all things grow plentifully, and are fruitful.
Martin Luther.
God, the first garden made, and the first city,
Abraham Cowley.
Had Eve a spade in Paradise and known what
to do with it, we should not have had all that bad
business of the apple.
"Elizabeth and Her German Garden"
( Countess Von Arnim. )
€Ije l^ontrcoHg d&artieng
The hanging gardens of Babylon (gate of God),
anciently reckoned among the Seven Wonders of the
World, were constructed by Nebuchadnezzar, King
of the Jews, about the fifth century before Christ.
They stand in history as a testimonial to a woman s
influence. Nebuchadnezzar had married him a wife,
the Median princess Amytis, whose heart yearned
for the hills and trees of her native land, and the
monarch, in order to gratify her, raised this prodig-
ious structure, 400 feet square, upon the west bank
of the river Euphrates, where the ruins are marked
even to this day.
The famous pensile gardens of Babylon, built
in the midst of the crowded city, were divided into
four terraces, each 100 feet wide, the highest adjoin-
ing the river ; it rose in |four mighty steps of 20 feet
each, to its topmost grade from 80 to 100 feet above
the level of the ground.
Massive piers of brick supported it, and between
them ran, entering from each side, twelve vaulted
passageways, each 10 feet wide, which were open to
traffic, or available for rooms and offices. Over the
piers giant blocks of stone were laid to support the
.mass above, and these were joined by meshes of
reeds set in cement, above which were layers of
tiles, also set in cement; and again above these
great sheets of lead, carefully joined so as to protect
the walls of the building from the moisture that
oozed through the soil above. On this was spread
deep, rich loam, and therein were planted, after the
manner of garden and park, rare shrubs and flowers
that delighted with color and perfume, and " broad-
leaved " trees that grew into stately dimensions, and
clung to the breast of the nurse as trustfully as had
it been that of old Mother Earth, Through a
shaft reaching down to the river, water was drawn
up to reservoirs in the upper terrace by some
mechanism that Diodorus, surely by an anachro-
nism, speaks of as a sort of Archimedes' screw.
Thence came the supply for the various fountains
and rills that decorated and refreshed the gardens.
This truly was a wonder of the world ; for in
the vaulted corridors below, the politician and the
money-changer plied their crafts, but the husband-
man and the farmer were for once on top.
Benjamin Ide Wheeler.
The Garden of Damascus
Wild as the nighest woodland of a deserted
home in England, but without its sweet sadness, is
the sumptuous Garden of Damascus. Forest trees
tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty
crests, yet lead a bustling life of it below, with their
branches struggling against strong numbers of
bushes and wilful shrubs. The shade upon the
earth is black as night. High, high above your
head, and on every side all down to the ground, the
thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the inter-
lacing boughs that droop with the weight of roses,
and load the slow air with their damask breath.
The rose trees which I saw were all of the kind we
call damask — they grow to an immense height and
size. There are no other flowers. Here and there
are patches of ground made clear from the cover,
and these are either carelessly planted with some
common and useful vegetable, or else are left free
to the wayward ways of nature, and bear rank weeds,
moist-looking and cool to your eyes, and freshening
the sense with their earthy and bitter fragrance.
Alexander William Kinglake.
"La Petite Trianon"
It contains about 100 acres, disposed in the taste
of what we read of in books of Chinese gardening,
whence it is supposed the English style was taken.
* * * It is not easy to conceive anything that art
can introduce in a garden that is not here ; woods,
rocks, lawns, lakes, rivers, islands, cascades, grottos,
walks, temples, and even villages. There are parts
of the design very pretty, and well executed. The
only fault is too much crowding ; which has led to
another, that of cutting the lawn by too many gravel
walks, an error to be seen in almost every garden I
have met with in France. But the glory of La
Petite Trianon is the exotic trees and shrubs. The
world has been successfully rifled to decorate it.
Here are curious and beautiful ones to please the
eye of ignorance ; and to exercise the memory of
ScienCC- Arthur Young.
In the royal ordering of gardens there ought to
be gardens for all the months of the year.
Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam).
A Royal "Herbere"
Now there was made fast by the tower wall
A garden fair, and in the corners set
An herbere green, with wands so long and small
Railed all about; and so with trees close set
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knit
That no one though he were near walking by
Might there within scarce any one espy.
* * * * * * *
So thick the branches and the leafage green
Beshades all the alleys that there were,
And 'midst of ev'ry herbere might be seen
The sharp and green sweet-scented juniper,
Growing so fair with branches here and there,
That, as it seemed to any one without,
The branches spread the herbere all about.
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And on the slender green-leaved branches sat
The little joyous nightingales, and sang
So loud and dear, the carols consecrat
To faithful love. King James 7 of Scotland,
( Written while imprisoned in Windsor Castle.)
The herb-plot was one of the most important
items in a mediaeval garden, for here were grown not
only herbs and roots [for healing, but also sweet-
scented mint and thyme for mingling with the rushes
strewn on the floor. Sometimes the rushes them-
selves were fragrant, and such, lemon-scented when
crushed, may even to-day be found in the neighbor-
hood of Oxford, probably growing in the very place
which at one time supplied many a college hall with
its carpet of fresh green. Alice Kgmp
A mediaeval garden girdled fair
With heart's-ease, mignonette and marigold,
Where dreams abide, where dwells not any cold
Nor cloud to mar the hyacinthine air;
An orchard close where wander debonair
Maidens, in sapphire kirtles, aureoled
With almond blossoms, lilting love-songs old,
Despite the presage of some pale despair;
Knights questing down dim dales of Faery;
Portent and prophecy and weird mischance;
Echoes of ancient runes that faint and flee ;
Flute-song and lute-song without dissonance;
And over all, like twilight o'er the sea,
The elusive gleam and glamour of Romance!
Clinton Scollard.
fltponagtic <0attoett$
A garden was an important and even essential
annex of a monastery, not only because of the
"herbularis" or physic garden, from the herbs of
which the monks compounded salves and potions
for the wounded knight or the plundered wayfarer
who might take shelter within its protecting walls,
but also because of the solace which the shady trees
and many flowers brought to the sick, for a monastery
was generally a hospital as well.
Selected.
"Herbularis''
A chaplet then of Herbs I'll make
Than which though yours be braver,
Yet this of mine I'll undertake
Shall not be short of savour :
With Basil then I will begin,
Whose scent is wondrous pleasing;
This Eglantine I'll next put in,
The sense with sweetness seizing;
Then in my Lavender I lay,
Muscado put among it,
With here and there a leaf of Bay,
Which still shall run along it.
Germander, Marjoram and Thyme,
Which used are for strewing ;
With Hyssop as an herb most prime
Here in my wreath bestowing;
Then Balm and Mint help to make up
My chaplet, and for trial
Costmary that so likes the Cup,
And next it Pennyroyal.
Then Burnet shall bear up with this,
Whose leaf I greatly fancy;
Some Camomile doth not amiss
With Savory and some Tansy.
Then here and there I'll put a sprig
Of Rosemary into it,
Thus not too Little nor too Big,
'Tis done if I can do it.
Michael Drayton.
" There is Balm for sympathy, Bay for glory,
Foxglove for sincerity, Basil for hatred."
Sage, too, sovereign Sage, best of all — excellent
for longevity — of which to-day's stock seems running
low, for —
Why should man die ? so doth the sentence say,
When sage grows in his garden day by day?
Amos Branson Alcott.
Closed on three sides by crumbling walls of brick,
All spotted by slow-creeping lichen stains,
And nearly hid by ivy, matted thick,
And dim with clinging mists of years of rains,
The Garden lies.
Inside the walls, the tall ailanthus' shade
Is tangled in the meshes of the grass,1
Or flecks the path, where mossy flags were laid
For childish feet, long since grown old to pass ;
Between the stones the scarlet pimpernel
Finds room to spread its thread-like roots and grow;
And all self-sown, the portulaca's bell
Lights up the ground with tender rosy glow ;
The walks are hedged with dusky green of box,
^That once enclosed long borders, trim and neat;
Within them stood great clumps of snowy phlox,
That shown at dusk, and grew more deeply sweet.
And now the phlox wild morning-glories seek,
Whose silky blossoms rove the Garden through,
And press pure faces 'gainst the thistle's cheek,
Or star-like gleam amid the grass and dew —
A thousand pushing weeds the borders hold,
And standing with them wild and rank as they,
Are tender blossoms, now grown over-bold,
And careless of the Garden's slow decay.
Oh, far away, in some serener air,
The eyes that loved them see a heavenly dawn:
How can they bloom without her tender care?
Why should they live, when her sweet life is
8°ne ? Margaret Deland.
And where the Marjoram once, and Sage and Rue,
And Balm, and Mint, with curl'd-leaf Parsley grew,
And double Marigolds, and silver Thyme,
And Pumpkins 'neath the window climb.
And where I often, when a child, for hours
Tried through the pales to get the tempting flowers,
As Lady's-laces, Everlasting Peas,
True-love-lies-bleeding, with the Hearts-at-ease
And Goldenrods, and Tansy running high,
That o'er the pale tops smiled on passers-by,
Flowers in my time which every one would praise,
Though thrown like weeds from gardens nowadays.
John Clare.
An Old-Fashioned Garden
An old-fashioned garden? Yes, my dear,
No doubt it is. I was thinking here
Only to-day, as I sat in the sun,
How fair was the scene I looked upon ;
Yet wondered still, with a vague surprise,
How it might look to other eyes.
So quiet it is, so cool and still,
In the green retreat of the shady hill!
And you scarce can tell as you look within,
Where the garden ends, and the woods begin.
But here, where we stand, what a blaze of light,
What a wealth of color, makes glad the sight !
Red roses burn in the morning glow;
White roses proffer their cups of snow;
In scarlet and crimson and cloth-of-gold
The zinnias flaunt, and the marigold ;
And stately and tall the lilies stand,
Like vestal virgins, on either hand.
Here gay sweet peas, like butterflies,
Flutter and dance under summer skies ;
Blue violets here in the shade are set,
With a border of fragrant mignonette ;
And here are pansies and columbine,
And the burning stars of the cypress vine.
Stately hollyhocks, row on row,
Golden sunflowers all aglow,
Scarlet poppies and larkspurs blue,
Asters of every shade and hue ;
And over the wall like a trail of fire
The red nasturtium climbs higher and higher.
Julia C. R. Dorr.
In former times the use of Box was not known,
and the manner of using it, if we believe the Table, was
introduc'd by the Goddess FLORA, who, believing it
to be an ornament prepared for Gardens, order'd it
to be made use of accordingly. Georgg
And did you not feel, in looking at those flowers,
how each made you love it as a friend — the Pinks,
and Sweet Williams, the Everlasting Peas, Valerian,
Day Lily, Jacob's Ladder, and a host of others ?
Forbes Watson.
The flower-de-luce forth spread his heavenly hue,
Flower Damasks, and Columbine white and blue,
Seyr downye small on Dent-de-lion sprang,
The young green blooming strawberry leaves amang.
Gawen Douglas.
The Wall-Flower
The wall-flower, the wall-flower,
How beautiful it blooms!
It gleams above the ruined tower,
Like sunlight over tombs ;
It sheds a halo of repose
Around the wrecks of time.
To beauty give the flaunting rose,
The wall-flower is sublime.
David Macbeth Moir.
Sweet Peas
Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
John Keats.
Tiger-Lilies
I like not lady-slippers,
Nor yet the sweet pea blossom,
Nor yet the flaky roses,
Red, or white as snow ;
I like the chaliced lilies,
The heavy Eastern lilies,
The gorgeous tiger-lilies,
That in our garden grow!
For they are tall and slender;
Their mouths are dashed with carmine,
And when the wind sweeps by them,
On their emerald stalks
They bend so proud and graceful, —
They are Circassian women,
The favorites of the Sultan,
Adown our garden walks !
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
The Morning-Glory
Wondrous interlacement !
Holding fast to threads by green and silky rings,
With the dawn it spreads its white and purple wings ;
Generous in its bloom, and sheltering while it climbs,
Sturdy morning-glory.
Creeping through the casement,
Slanting to the floor in dusty, shining beams,
Dancing on the door in quick, fantastic gleams,
Comes the new day's light, and pours in tearless
streams,
Golden morning-glory.
The Pink
And dearer I, the Pink, must be,
And me thou sure dost choose,
Or else the gard'ner ne'er for me
Such watchful care would use ;
A crowd of leaves enriching bloom !
And mine through life the sweet perfume,
And all the thousand hues.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
As for mangolds, poppies, hollyhocks and val-
orous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden
without them, both for thine own sake and for the
sake of old-fashioned folk, who used to love them.
Henry Ward Beecher.
Ah, Sunflower, weary of time
Who countest the steps of the sun ;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime,
Where the traveller's journey is done;
Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go.
William Blake.
* * * The great upstanding hollyhocks,
Those heavenward ladders by which in a row
Roses footing for angels go,
The larger, the farther down they grow.
Laurence Housman.
In all times the English have been fond of
gardens. Bacon thought it not beneath his dignity
to order the arrangement of a garden. Long before
Bacon, a writer of the twelfth century describes a
garden as it should be: "It should be adorned on
this side with roses, lilies and the marigold; on that
side with parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood, cori-
ander, sage, savory, hyssop, mint, vine, deltany,
pellitory, lettuce, cresses, and the peony! Let there
be beds enriched with onions, leek, garlic, melons,
scallions. The garden is also enriched by the
cucumber, the soporiferous poppy, and the daffodil,
and the acanthus. Nor let pot-herbs be wanting,
as beet-root, sorrel and mallow. It is useful also to
the gardener to have anise, mustard and wormwood."
Walter Besant.
An Elizabethan Garden
And all without were walkes and alleys dight
With divers trees enrang'd in even rankes ;
And here and there were pleasant arbors pight
And shadie seats, and sundry flowering bankes
To sit and rest the walkers' wearie shankes.
Edmund Spenser.
Pope's Satire on English Gardening
How contrary to this simplicity (of Homer) is
the modern practice of gardening ! We seem to make
it our study to recede from nature, not only in the
various tonsure of greens into the most regular and
formal shape, but even in monstrous attempts beyond
the reach of the art itself: we run into sculpture,
and are yet better pleased to have our trees in the
most aukward figures of men and animals, than in
the most regular of their own. * * *
For the benefit of all my loving countrymen of
this curious taste, I shall here publish a catalogue of
greens to be disposed of by an eminent town-
gardener, who has lately applied to me upon this
head. He represents, that for the advancement of
a politer sort of ornament in the villas and gardens
adjacent to this great city, and in order to distinguish
those places from the mere barbarous countries of
gross nature, the world stands much in need of a
virtuoso gardener, who has a turn to sculpture, and
is thereby capable of improving upon the ancients
in the imagery of evergreens.
I proceed to this catalogue : —
Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered
by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great
storm; Eve and the serpent very flourishing.
Noah's Ark, in holly, the ribs a little damaged
for want of water.
The tower of Babel not yet finished.
St. George in Box; his arm scarce long enough,
but will be in a condition to stick the dragon by
next April.
A green dragon of the same, with a tail of
ground-ivy for the present.
N. B. Those two are not to be sold separately.
Edward the Black Prince in Cypress. * * *
A Queen Elizabeth inPhillyrea; a little inclined
to the Green sickness, but of old growth. * * *
An old maid of honour in wormwood.
A topping Ben Jonson in Laurel.
Divers eminent modern poets in bays, somewhat
blighted, to be disposed of a pennyworth.
of tlje Orient
Chinese Gardens
The art of laying out gardens consists in an
endeavor to combine cheerfulness of aspect, luxuri-
ance of growth, shade, solitude and repose, in such
a manner that the senses may be deluded by an
imitation of rural nature. Diversity, which is the
main advantage of free landscape, must, therefore,
be sought in a judicious choice of soil, an alternation
of chains of hills and valleys, gorges, brooks, and
lakes covered with aquatic plants. Symmetry is
wearying, and ennui and disgust will soon be excited
in a garden where every part betrays constraint
and art' Lien-Tschen.
(Quoted by A. von Humboldt^)
"The Garden of Gardens"
The Chinese trace back the origin of their gardens
to the remotest antiquity (2600 B. C.)
The Chinese Emperor's garden at Pekin, begun
in 1723 and pillaged in 1 860, was called the "Garden
of Gardens." The letters of a French Jesuit Mis-
sionary, Pere Attiret, descriptive of it, and translated
by Joseph Spence in 1752, kindled a flame of
enthusiasm throughout Europe.
Attiret describes the artificial hills 20 to 60 feet
high with little valleys interspersed, rivers and rivulets
running together through these to form lakes, with
pleasure-houses to the number of 200 on their
banks; the rough irregular rockwork — twisting and
winding paths, and bridges which also serpentised.
One of the lakes was nearly five miles round,
studded with islands, and rocks, and with infinitely
varied banks. Albgrt Forbef Sieveking.
In my opinion, the chrysanthemum is the flower
of retirement and culture; the peony, the flower of
rank and wealth; the water-lily, the Lady Virtue
Sans Pareilk.
chgw
(A Chine it writer, 1017-1073.)
Japanese Gardens
The Japanese derived their landscape-garden
originally from the Chinese, but besides imitating
nature they endeavor to impart to their designs a
symbolical character, expressing an abstract idea or
sentiment such as "Retirement," "Meditation" or
"Fidelity." * * * As in the Chinese gardens, hills
are a fundamental feature, but the Chinese gardens
abound more in small kiosks and ballustraded gal-
leries, and rockeries honeycombed with caves and
grottos, and the Chinese also employ more flowering
plants than the Japanese. Selected
Persian Gardens
After what I have said of the number and beauty
of the flowers in Persia, one might easily imagine
that the most beautiful gardens in the world are to
be found there; but this is not at all the case.
* * * The Gardens of the Persians consist com-
monly of a grand alley or straight avenue in the
centre, planted with plane * * * which divides the
garden into two parts. There is a basin of water in
the middle, proportionate to the garden, and two
other lesser ones on the two sides. The space
between them is sown with a mixture of flowers in
natural confusion, and planted with fruit trees and
roses ; and this is the whole of the plan and execution.
They know nothing of parterres and cabinets of
verdure, labyrinths, terraces and such other orna-
ments of our gardens. The reason of which is, that
the Persians do not walk in their gardens, as we do ;
but content themselves with having the view of them,
and breathing the fresh air. Sir John
Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great
as it is in society. Alfred Austin.
The Dutch style of laying out gardens,rintroduced
into England by William III and Mary, is not unlike
the French, but everything is on a smaller, almost
too minute a scale; and much care is expended upon
isolated details and ornaments (often trivial), such
as glass balls, coloured sands and earths, flower-pots
innumerable, and painted perspectives; and the
garden is usually intersected with canals degenerating
into ditches. Grassy slopes, green terraces and
straight canals are more common in Holland than
in any other country of the Continent, and these
verdant slopes and mounds may be said to form,
with their oblong canals, the characteristics of the
Dutch style. ~ , nj ,. r ,
t John Claudius London.
I asked an old gardener whether he could tell
me anything about Dutch Gardens, and he made
answer, "They be bits o' beds with edgings o' box,
and gravel walks, and four sloping banks forming a
square outside, and they be pratty toys for children,
and very snug for varmint. " s Reynolds
Love has made many lovers foolish; but it took
flower-love to drive a nation crazy, and of all nations
it was the sober-minded Dutchmen ! Once in Holland
they grew ecstatic over tulips; so crazily fond of
tulips that two thousand dollars was cheap for a
single bulb. All ranks high and low were carried
off their understandings into tulip-speculations ; the
towns had their tulip-exchange; the public notary
became the tulip-notary, and when the bubble
burst, fortunes vanished ; the panic was national, and
the country did not get over the shock to its
commerce for several years. mw*m C. Gannett.
Gold and crimson tulips
Lift your bright heads up,
Catch the shining dewdrops
In your dainty cups.
If the birdies see you
When they're flying by,
They will think a sunset
Dropped from out the sky.
Alice C. D. Riley.
Gardens are almost as beautiful in some parts of
Germany as in England; the luxury of gardens
always implies a love of the Country. In England
simple mansions are often built in the middle of the
most magnificent parks ; the proprietor neglects his
dwelling to attend to the ornament of nature. This
magnificence and simplicity united do not, it is true,
exist in the same degree in Germany ; yet, in spite of
the want of wealth, and the pride of feudal dignity,
there is everywhere to be remarked a certain love of
the beautiful, which sooner or later must be followed
by taste and elegance, of which it is the only real
source. Often in the midst of the superb gardens
of the German princes are placed /Eolian harps
close by grottos, encircled with flowers, that the
wind may waft the sound and the perfume together.
Madame De Stael.
Germany has been in the main a follower rather
than a leader in garden design; but she has played
an important part in spreading knowledge upon the
theory, and in producing tasteful and skilful de-
signers in the modern "national" style. * * * Ham-
burg has always been a garden-city, and maintained
its reputation in this respect by the great Garten-
Ausstellung held there in 1897. Selected
Italian
The old Italian garden was meant to be lived
in — a use to which, at least in America, the modern
garden is seldom put.
* * * The cult of the Italian garden has spread
from England to America, and there is a general feel-
ing that by placing a marble bench here and a sun-dial
there, Italian "effects" may be achieved. The results
produced, even where much money and thought have
been expended, are not altogether satisfactory; and
some critics have thence inferred that the Italian
garden is, so to speak, untranslatable, that it cannot
be adequately rendered in another landscape and
another age.
* * * It is, of course, an exaggeration to say that
there are no flowers in Italian gardens; but, to enjoy
and appreciate the Italian garden-craft, one must
understand at the outset that it is almost independ-
ent of floriculture.
The Italian garden does not exist for its flowers;
such flowers as it contains exist for it.
Edith Wharton.
An Englishwoman's Italian Garden
I am really as fond of my garden as a young
author of his first play, when it has been well received
by the town. * * * I have made two little terasses,
raised twelve steps each, at the end of my great walk ;
they are just finished, and a great addition to the beauty
of my garden. * * * I have mixed in my espaliers
as many rose and jessamin trees as I can cram in;
and in the squares designed for the use of the kitchen,
have avoided putting anything disagreeable either to
sight or smell, having another garden below for
cabbage, onions, garlic. All the walks are garnished
with beds of flowers, besides the parterres, which are
for a more distinguished sort. I have neither brick
nor stone walls: all my fence is a high hedge,
mingled with trees; but fruit is so plenty in this
country, nobody thinks it worth stealing. Gardening
is certainly the next amusement to reading ; and as
my sight will now permit me little of that, I am glad
to form a taste that can give me so much employ-
ment and be the plaything of my age, now my pen
and needle are almost useless to me.
Lady Mary Worthy Montagu.
We wonder in England, when we hear it related
by travellers, that peaches in Italy are left under the
trees for swine ; but, when we ourselves come into
the country, our wonder is rather that the swine do
not leave them for animals less nice.
Walter Savage Lander.
The earliest Spanish gardens were the creation
of the Moors, and bear the Arabian stamp of their
origin, half Asiatic, half African. Perhaps their
design has the strongest affinity to the gardens of
Persia, with their shallow water running down the
centre over coloured tiles, and their innumerable
fountains, for water in one form or another is the
predominant feature. Selected
And in Spain, like a scene in the Arabian Nights,
comes back to us the old Moorish garden of Granada,
with marble-lined canal and lofty arcades of trimmed
yew, tipped with crescents, pyramids and crowns.
<<E. V. B."
(Hon. Mrs. Boyle.)
The garden beneath my window, before wrapped
in gloom, was gently lighted up, the orange and
citron trees were tipped with silver; the fountain
sparkled in the moonbeams, and even the blush of
the rose was faintly visible. I now felt the poetic
merit of the Arabic description on the walls
(The Alhambra) :
"How beautiful is this garden, where the flowers
of the earth vie with the stars of heaven ! What can
compare with the vase of yon alabaster fountain filled
with crystal water? Nothing but the moon in her
fulness, shining in the midst of an unclouded sky !"
Washington living.
Rational tf lot»er$
Monarchs and nations have often had their sym-
bolic flowers. The Thistle is the emblem of Scot-
land, and the Shamrock of Ireland. The Fleur de
Lis is the badge of the royal house of France, and
the Amaranth that of Sweden. The Rose is on
the royal coat of arms of England.
The rose may bloom for England,
The lily for France unfold;
Ireland may honor the shamrock,
Scotland her thistle bold,
But the shield of the Great Republic,
The glory of the West,
Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled corn,
Of all our wealth the best.
Edna Dean Proctor.
They have asked me to vote for a national flower, —
Now, which will it be, I wonder ;
To settle the question is out of my power ;
But I'd rather not make a blunder.
Instead of one flower, I will vote for three :
The Mayflowers know that I mean them;
And the Goldenrod surely my choice will be, —
With the Sweetbrier-Rose between them.
Lucy Larcom.
d&at&en of
Before me was the garden where I had played
all my childhood, until playing had turned into
dreaming. It was unkempt, but it seemed to have
more dignity and meaning than the garden of my
memory; the unpruned rose-bushes reached out
long bare arms, or formed briery tangles according
to their kind ; the shrubs were massive and well-
grown, and had the soothing influence of perma-
nence. In a sheltered corner a cluster of chrysanthe-
mums unharmed by frost showed their silvery disks,
and a single crumpled pansy looked up from the
path where it had found footing.
"The Garden of a Commuter's Wife"
(Mabel Osgood Wright.}
Baby, what do the blossoms say,
Down in the garden walk ?
They nod and bend in the twilight gray ;
Say ! can you hear them talk ?
They say, " Oh, darling baby bright,
We're going to sleep! good night, good night !
The gentle breezes have come to sing
How God takes care of everything."
Sarah E. Hen sham.
I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light !
The lilacs, where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday, —
The tree is living yet.
Thomas Hood.
When to the garden of untroubled thought
I came of late, and saw the open door
And wished again to enter and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought,
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,
It seemed some purer voice must speak before
I dared to tread the garden, loved of yore,
That Eden lost unknown, and found unsought.
Then just within the gate I saw a child —
A strange child, yet to my heart most dear —
He held his hands to me, and softly smiled
With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear ;
" Come in," he said, " and play awhile with me ;
I am the little child you used to be."
Henry van Dyke.
A Girl's Garden
I see the garden thicket's shade
Where all the summer long we played;
And gardens set and houses made,
Our early work and late.
Mary How it t.
Let us peer into these garden thickets at these
happy little girls, fantastic in their garden dress.
Their hair is hung thick with Dandelion curls, made
from pale green opal-tinted stems that have grown
long under the shrubbery and Box borders. Around
their necks are childish wampum, strings of Dande-
lion beads or Daisy chains. More delicate wreaths
for the neck or hair were made from the blossoms
of the Four-o'clock or the petals of Phlox or Lilacs,
threaded with pretty alternation of color. Fuchsias
were hung at the ears for eardrops, green leaves were
pinned with leaf stems into little caps and bonnets
and aprons, Foxgloves made dainty children's gloves.
Truly the garden-bred child went in gay attire.
Alice Morse Earle.
I
A Boy's Garden
Like other boys in the country, I had my patch
of ground, to which, in the springtime, I entrusted
the seeds furnished me, with a confident trust in
their resurrection and glorification in the better world
of summer.
But I soon found that my lines had fallen in a
place where a vegetable growth had to run the
gauntlet of as many foes and trials as a Christian
pilgrim. Flowers would not blow ; daffodils perished
like criminals in their condemned cups, without
their petals ever seeing daylight; roses were disfigured
with monstrous protrusions through their very cen-
tres,— something that looked like a second bud
pushing through the middle of the corolla ; lettuces
and cabbages would not head; radishes knotted
themselves until they looked like centenarian's fin-
gers ; and on every stem, on every leaf, and both
sides of it, and at the root of everything that grew,
was a professional specialist in the shape of a gnat,
caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it
was to devour that particular part, and help murder
the whole attempt at vegetation.
Olive r Wendell Holmes.
The three first men in the world were a Gardiner,
a Ploughman, and a Grazier; and if any man object
that the second of these was a murtherer, I desire
that he would consider that as soon as he was so, he
quitted our profession, and turned builder.
Abraham Coivlej.
I can now understand in what sense they speak
of Father Adam. I recognise the paternity, while I
watch my tulips. I almost feel with him, too ; for
the first day I turned a drunken gardener (as he let
in the serpent) into my Eden, and he laid about him,
lopping off some choice boughs, etc., which hung
over from a neighbour's garden, and in his blind zeal
laid waste a shade, which had sheltered their window
from the gaze of passers-by. The old gentlewoman
* * could scarcely be reconciled by all my fine words.
There was no buttering her parsnips. She talked
of the law. What a lapse to commit on the first
day of my happy " garden state " ! charks ^
Neither a garden nor a gardener can be made in
one year, nor in one generation, even.
"The Garden of a Commuter's Wife."
(Mabel Osgood Wright.}
To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe,
to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life, — this
is the commonest delight of the race, the most satis-
factory thing one can do. charlgs
I think there are as many kinds of gardeners as
of poetry ; your makers of parterres and flower-
gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art ;
contrivers of bowers and grottos, treillages and cas-
cades, are romance writers.
Joseph Addison.
Dr. Burgh in his notes on the English Garden
calls " Bacon, the prophet ; Milton, the herald; and
Addison, Pope and Kent, the champions " of this
true taste in gardening, because they absolutely
brought it into execution. D ~ n „
& Rev . james Dallaway.
I often think, when working over my plants, of
what Linnaeus once said of the unfolding of a blos-
som : — "I saw God in His glory passing near me,
and bowed my head in worship." jghn
location for a
With orchard, and with g^rdeyne, or with mede
Se that thyne hous with hem be umviroune.
The side in longe upon the South thou sprede,
The cornel ryse upon the wynter sonne,
And gire it from the cold West yf thou conne.
A. D. Palladius.
(Middle English translation, 4th or 5th Century.)
A south slope is the ideal situation for a garden,
since it insures good drainage and the greatest
amount of sunlight. The garden should also be open
to the east and west, if possible; that it may have
the benefit of the morning and evening sun. Shelter
on the north is desirable, as north winds are disas-
trous to Roses and tender perennials. Partial shelter
on the west should be given in localities where the
prevailing winds of winter are from that quarter.
* * * The garden should always be at the rear
or side of the dwelling, never in front or along the
street. The reasons for this are obvious. The gar-
den proper is intended to furnish cut flowers, to pro-
vide a place of experiment with new varieties, and
to grow hardy perennials which have certain seasons
of bloom and cannot be depended upon at all times
for ornamental effect. One should feel free to work
there unobserved of the passer-by, and this is im-
possible in a garden close to the street.
Ida D. Bennett.
My garden should lie to the south of the house,
the ground gradually sloping for some short way
till it fall abruptly into the dark and tangled shrub-
beries that all but hide the winding brook below.
A broad terrace, half as wide, at least, as the house
is high, should run along the whole southern length
of the building, extending to the western side also,
whence, over the distant country, I may catch the
last red light of the setting sun. * * * The upper
terrace should be strictly architectural, and no plants
are to be harboured there, save such as twine among
the balustrades, or fix themselves in the mouldering
crevices of the stone. I can endure no plants in
pots, — a plant in a pot is like a bird in a cage.
Thomas James.
dSartien in
Spring Has Come
And first the snowdrop's bells are seen,
Then close against the sheltering wall
The tulip's horn of dusky green,
The peony's dark unfolding ball.
The golden-chaliced crocus burns,
The long narcissus blades appear,
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns
To light her blue-flamed chandelier.
The willow's whistling lashes, wrung
By the wild winds of gusty March,
With sallow leaflets lightly strung,
Are swaying by the tufted larch.
See the proud tulip's flaunting cup,
That flames in glory for an hour, —
Behold it withering, — then look up, —
How meek the forest monarch's flower !
When wake the violets, Winter dies ;
When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near ;
When lilacs blossom, Summer cries,
" Bud little roses, Spring is here."
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Easter in "Elizabeth's German Garden
Oh, I could dance and sing for joy that the Spring
is here ! What a resurrection of beauty there is in
my garden, and of brightest hope in my heart !
The whole of this radiant Easter day I have
spent out of doors, sitting at first among the wind-
flowers and celandines, and then, later, walking with
the babies to the Hirschwald, to see what the spring
had been doing there ; and the afternoon was so hot
that we lay a long time on the turf, blinking up
through the leafless branches of the silver birches at
the soft, fat little white clouds floating motionless in
the blue. We had tea on the grass in the sun, and
when it began to grow late, and the babies were in
bed, and all the little windflowers folded up for the
night, I still wandered in the green paths, my heart
full of happiest gratitude.
" There is a princess or a duchess or somebody
* * * and she lives in Germany and is named
Elizabeth, and she's written a book about her garden,
and it made such things the rage."
"The Garden of a Commuter's Wife."
(Mabel Qsgood Wright.)
Spring Flowers
The Spring she is a blessed thing;
She is the mother of the flowers,
She is the mate of birds and bees,
The partner of their revelries,
Our star of hope through wintry hours.
Mary Howitt.
The eyes of Spring, so azure,
Are peeping from the ground ;
They are the darling violets
That I in nosegays bound.
Heinrich Heine.
Again has come the Spring-time,
With the crocus's golden bloom,
With the smell of the fresh-turned earth-mould,
And the violet's perfume.
O gardener ! tell me the secret
Of thy flowers so rare and sweet ! —
— " I have only enriched my garden
With the black mire from the street."
Samuel Longfellow.
The loveliest flowers the closest cling to earth,
And they first feel the sun : so violets blue ;
So the soft star-like primrose — drenched in dew —
The happiest of Spring's happy, fragrant birth.
John Keble.
To Mistress Daffodil
Will they laugh at your old-fashioned gown,
Daffodil?
At your simple and plain little gown,
As you enter the streets of the town, —
Pass you by with a sneer and a frown,
Daffodil?
Nay, tell them old fashions are best,
Daffodil.
Old friends are the dearest and best,
And the flower we would wear at our breast
Is the one longer loved than the rest —
Daffodil.
Margaret Johnson.
No pampered bloom of the greenhouse chamber
Has half the charm of the lawn's first flower.
William Cullen Bryant.
Lilacs
The universal flower in the old-time garden was
the Lilac; it was the most beloved bloom of spring,
and gave a name to Spring — Lilac tide. * * * Lilacs
shade the front yard; Lilacs grow by the kitchen
doorstep ; Lilacs spring up beside the barn ; Lilacs
shade the well; Lilacs hang over the spring house;
Lilacs crowd by the fence side and down the country
road. In many colonial dooryards it was the only
shrub — known both to lettered and unlettered folk
as Laylock, and spelt Laylock too.
Alice Morse Earle.
How fair it stood, with purple tassels hung,
Their hue more tender than the tint of Tyre ;
How musical amid their fragrance rung
The bee's bassoon, keynote of spring's glad
choir !
0 languorous Lilac ! still in time's despite
1 see thy plumy branches all alight
With new-born butterflies which loved to stay
And bask and banquet in the temperate ray
Of springtime, ere the torrid heats should be :
For these dear memories, though the world grow
I sing thy sweetness, lovely Lilac tree !
Elizabeth Aken.
Shrubs there are
* * * That at the call of Spring
Burst forth in blossomed fragrance ; lilacs, robed
In snow-white innocence or purple pride.
James Thomson.
The Lilac bush, tall growing with heart-shaped leaves
of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising delicate with
the perfume strong, I love.
With every leaf a miracle. ,„ ,f TJVJ.-.
* Walt Whitman.
Lilac of Persia ! tell us some fine tale
Of Eastern lands ; we're fond of travellers.
Have you no legends of some Sultan proud,
Or old fire-worshipper ? What, not one note
Made on your voyage ? Well, 'tis wondrous strange
That you should let so rare a chance pass by,
While those who never journeyed half so far
Fill sundry volumes, and expect the world
To reverently peruse and magnify
What it well knew before ! T ,. „ „•
Lyaia H. Sigourney.
autumn <JFlotpet#
i These few pale Autumn flowers !
How beautiful they are !
Than all that went before,
Than all the Summer store,
How lovelier far !
Caroline Southey.
There comes a time when we cherish chrysan-
themums and china-asters even of the most ordinary
sort; but that is not till the violets and the roses
and the lilies are all faded.
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.
The purple asters bloom in crowds
In every shady nook,
And ladies' ear-drops deck the banks
Of many a babbling brook.
Elaine Goodale.
Love-Lies-Bleeding
This flower that first appeared as Summer's guest
Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves,
And to her mournful habit fondly clings.
William Wordsworth.
" The gentian hid a thoughtful eye
Beneath dark fringes, blue and shy,
Only by warmest noonbeams won
To meet the welcome of the sun."
Origin of the Gentian
Once to the Angel of Birds, far up in the rippling air,
From low on the sun-loved earth the Angel of
Flowers breathed a prayer :
" Four plumes from the bluebird's wing and I'll
make me something rare."
Four plumes from the bluebird's wing, as fast to the
South he flew !
The Angel of Flowers caught them up as they fell in
the Autumn dew,
And shaped with a twirl of her fingers this spire of
feathery blue.
Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.
William Cullen Bryant.
iff lowers
I like white flowers better than any others ; they
resemble fair women. Lily, Tuberose, Orange and
the truly English Syringa are my heart's delight.
Walter Savage Landor.
And the stately lilies stand
Fair in the silvery light,
Like saintly vestals, pale in prayer;
Their pure breath sanctifies the air,
As its fragrance fills the night.
Julia C. R.
Dorr.
" Somebody said that a lily didn't have no pore
kin among the flowers. It ain't no wonder they
most die of dignity. They're like the 'Piscopals in
more ways 'n one ; both hates to be disturbed, both
like some shade, an' " — confidentially — " both air
putty pernickity : But to tell you the truth, ain't
nothin' kin touch 'em when it comes to beauty ! I
think all the other beds is proud of 'em, if you'd
come to look into it. Why, look at weddin's an*
funerals. Don't all the churches call in the 'Pisco-
pals an' the lilies on both occasions ?"
Alice Hegan Rice.
We are Lilies fair,
The flower of virgin light,
Nature held us forth, and said —
" Lo ! my thoughts of white."
Ever since then, Angels
Hold us in their hands;
You may see them where they take
In pictures their sweet stands.
Like the garden's angels
Also do we seem,
And not the less for being crowned
With a golden dream.
Could you see around us
The enamoured air,
You would see it pale with bliss
To hold a thing so fair. Leigh Hunf
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen,
Through their pavilions of tender green.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
A Bulb
Misshapen, black, unlovely to the sight,
O mute companion of the murky mole,
You must feel overjoyed to have a white,
Imperious, dainty lily for a soul !
Richard Kendall Munkittrick.
The tuberose, with her silvery light,
That in the gardens of Malay
Is called the Mistress of the Night,
So like a bride, scented and bright ;
She comes out when the sun's away.
Thomas Moore.
My White Chrysanthemum
As purely white as is the drifted snow,
More dazzling fair than summer roses are;
Petalled with rays like a clear rounded star,
When winds pipe chilly and red sunsets glow,
Your blossoms blow.
Sweet with a freshening fragrance, all their own,
In which a faint, dim breath of bitter lies,
Like wholesome truth 'mid honeyed flatteries ;
When other blooms are dead, and birds have flown,
You stand alone.
Fronting the winter with a fearless grace,
Flavoring the odorless gray autumn chill,
Nipped by the furtive frosts, but cheery still,
Lifting to heaven from the bare garden place
A smiling face. c n ,.,
Susan Coohage.
Azaleas — whitest of white !
White as the drifted snow
Fresh-fallen out of the night,
Before the coming glow
Tinges the morning light ;
When the light is like the snow,
White,
And the silence is like the light :
Light, and silence, and snow, —
All — white !
White ! not a hint
Of the creamy tint
A rose will hold,
The whitest rose in its inmost fold;
Not a possible blush ;
White as an embodied hush ;
A very rapture of white;
A wedlock of silence and light ;
White, white as the wonder undefiled
Of Eve just wakened in Paradise ;
Nay, white as the angel of a child
That looks into God's own eyes !
Harriet McEwen Kimball.
"Blue
If blue is the favorite colour of bees, and if
bees have so much to do with the origin of flowers,
how is it that there are so few blue ones ! I believe
the explanation to be that all blue flowers have de-
scended from ancestors in which the flowers were
green ; or, to speak more precisely, in which the
leaves surrounding the stamens and pistil were green,
and that they have passed through stages of white
or yellow, and generally red, before becoming blue.
Sir John Lubbock.
The hyacinth for constancy wi' its unchanging
blue. „ , „
Robert Burns.
Origin of Violets
I know, blue modest violets,
Gleaming with dew at morn —
I know the place you come from
And the way that you are born !
When God cut holes in Heaven,
The holes the stars look through,
He let the scraps fall down to earth, —
The little scraps are you. Uaknotvn.
Flower-de-Luce, the flower of chivalry — with a
sword for its leaf, and a Lily for its heart.
John Ruskin.
Harebells
Blue bells, on blue hills, where the sky is blue,
Here's a little blue-gowned maid come to look at you ;
Here's a little child would fain, at the vesper time,
Catch the music of your hearts, hear the harebells
chime —
" Little hare, little hare," softly prayeth she,
" Come, come across the hills, and ring the bells
for me." P ., -.* „ tr- z
Emi/v M. P. HieKey.
The blue Flag: a little too showy and gaudy,
like some women's bonnets. „ n -j <rt
Henry David Thoreau.
Sweet lavender ! I love thy flower
Of meek and modest blue,
Which meets the morn and evening hour,
The storm, the sunshine, and the shower,
And changeth not its hue.
Agnes Strickland.
The Historical Rose
The Rose doth deserve the chiefest and most
principall place among all flowers whatsoever ; being
not only esteemed for his beautie, vertues, and his
fragrant smell, but also because it is the honour and
ornament of our English Sceptre.
John Gerarde, 1560.
" The brawl to-day
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden
Shall send, between the red Rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night."
Shakespeare.
The White Rose
Sent by a Yorkish Lover to his Lancastrian Mistress
If this fair rose offend thy sight,
Placed in thy bosom bare,
'Twill blush to find itself less white,
And turn Lancastrian there.
But if thy ruby lip it spy,
As kiss it thou mayest deign,
With envy pale 'twill lose its dye,
And Yorkish turn again. Anonymous.
The Floweret of a Hundred Leaves
The joyous time — when pleasures pour
Profusely round, and in their shower
Hearts open like the season's Rose —
The Floweret of a Hundred Leaves,
Expanding while the dew-fall flows,
And every leaf its balm receives.
Thomas Moore.
Near that old Rose named from its hundred kaves
The lovely Bridal Roses sweetly blush;
The Climbing Rose across the trellis weaves
A canopy suffused with tender flush ;
The Damask Roses swing on tiny trees,
And here the Seven Sisters glow like floral pleiades.
John Russell Hayes.
Each New Year is a leaf of our love's rose ;
It falls, but quick another rose-leaf grows.
So is the flower from year to year the same,
But richer, for the dead leaves feed its flame.
Richard Watson Gilder.
O beautiful, royal Rose,
0 Rose so fair and sweet !
Queen of the garden art thou,
And I — the Clay at thy feet!
*****
It is not mine to approach thee ;
1 never may kiss thy lips,
Or touch the hem of thy garment
With tremulous finger-tips,
Yet, O thou beautiful Rose !
Queen rose, so fair and sweet,
What were lover or crown to thee
Without the Clay at thy feet?
Julia C. R. Dorr.
The lily has an air,
And the snowdrop a grace,
And the sweet pea a way,
And the heart' s-ease a face, —
Yet there's nothing like the rose
When she blows.
Christina G. Rossetti.
Omar's Rose
Look to the Rose that blows about us — " Lo,
" Laughing," she says, " into this World I blow :
" At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
"Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throws."
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
O stately Roses, yellow, white, and red,
As Omar loved you, so we love to-day.
Some Roses with the vanished years have sped,
And some our mother's mothers laid away
Among their bridal gown's soft silken folds,
Where each pale petal for their sons a precious
memory holds.
And some we find among the yellowed leaves
Of slender albums, once the parlor's pride,
Where faint-traced Ivy-pattern interweaves
The mottoes over which the maiden sighed.
O faded Roses, did they match your red,
Those fair young cheeks whose color long ago
with years has fled? Jgha Russf// Hay^
The Moss Rose
The angel of the flowers one day,
Beneath a rose-tree sleeping lay, —
That spirit to whose charge 'tis given
To bathe young buds in dews of heaven.
Awaking from his light repose,
The angel whispered to the rose :
" O fondest object of my care,
Still fairest found, where all are fair;
For the sweet shade thou giv'st to me
Ask what thou wilt, 't is granted thee."
" Then," said the rose, with deepened glow,
" On me another grace bestow."
The spirit paused, in silent thought,
What grace was there that flower had not?
'Twas but a moment, — o'er the rose
A veil of moss the angel throws,
And, robed in nature's simplest weed,
Could there a flower that rose exceed ?
From the German of Krummacher.
Clje
"The Garden Hypnotist"
The poppy, though brief of days, is the garden
hypnotist. Look steadily at a mass of these glowing
flowers blending their multicolors in the full sunlight.
At first their brilliancy is blinding; then as the pet-
als undulate on the slender stems, your attention is
riveted as if a hundred eyes returned your gaze, and
drowsiness steals over you, for each flower bears the
spell of the hypnotic pod, whose seeds bring sleep.
" The Garden of a Commuter's Wife."
(Mabel Osgood Wright.'}
We are slumbrous poppies
Lords of Lethe downs,
Some awake, and some asleep,
Sleeping in our crowns.
What perchance our dreams may know,
Let our serious beauty show.
Leigh Hunt.
I have in my hand a small red Poppy which I
gathered on Whit-Sunday in the palace of the Caesars.
It is an intensely simple, intensely floral flower.
All silk and flame, a scarlet cup ! perfect edged all
round, seen among the wild grass far away like a
burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. You
cannot have a more complete, a more stainless type
of flower absolute ; inside and outside all flower.
No sparing of color anywhere, no outside coarsenesses,
no interior secrecies, open as the sunshine that creates
it ; fine finished on both sides, down to the extremest
point of insertion on its narrow stalk, and robed in
the purple of the Caesars. John Rusk^
Here the poppy hosts assemble :
How they startle, how they tremble !
All their royal hoods unpinned
Blow out lightly in the wind.
Here is gold to labor for ;
Here is pillage worth a war.
Men that in the cities grind,
Come ! before the heart is blind.
Edwin Markham.
Concerning
A seed we say is a simple thing,
The germ of a flower or weed, —
But all Earth's workmen, laboring
With all the help that wealth could bring,
Never could make a seed.
Julian S. Cutler.
Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful
universe of God, nothing seems to me more sur-
prising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth
and the result thereof. Take a poppy seed, for
instance: it lies in your palm, the merest atom of
matter, hardly visible, a speck, a pin's point in bulk,
but within it is imprisoned a spirit of beauty ineffable,
which will break its bonds and emerge from the dark
ground and blossom in a splendor so dazzling as to
baffle all powers of description.
The Genie in the Arabian tale is not half so
astonishing. In this tiny casket lie folded roots,
stalks, leaves, buds, flowers, seed-vessels, — surprising
color and beautiful form, all that goes to make up a
plant which is as gigantic in proportion to the bounds
that confine it as the Oak is to the acorn.
Celia Thaxter.
Oh, downy dandelion wings,
Wild floating wings like silver spun,
That dance and glitter in the sun !
You airy things, you elfin things,
That June-time always brings !
Oh, are you seeds that seek the earth,
The light of laughing flowers to spread ?
Or flitting fairies, that had birth
When merry words were said?
Helen Gray Cone.
Baby Seed Song
Little brown brother, oh! little brown brother,
Are you awake in the dark?
Here we lie cosily, close to each other:
Hark to the song of the lark —
"Waken !" the lark says, "waken and dress you ;
Put on your green coats and gay,
Blue sky will shine on you, sunshine caress you —
Waken! 'tis morning — 'tis May!"
Edith Nesbit Eland.
A weed is a plant out of place.
Margaret Scott Gatty.
With the first faint green lines that are visible
among the flower beds come the weeds, yea, and even
before them; a wild vigorous straggling army, full
of health, of strength, and a most marvelous power
of growth. These must be dealt with at once and
without mercy; they must be pulled up root and
branch, without a moment's delay. Celia Thaxter.
I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds.
They grow as if the devil was in them. I know a
lady, a member of the church, and a very good sort
of woman, considering the subject condition of that
class, who says that the weeds work on her to that
extent that, in going through her garden, she has the
greatest difficulty in keeping the ten commandments
in anything like an unfractured condition. I asked
her which one, but she said, all of them : one felt
like breaking the whole lot. Charle, Dudley Warner.
You cannot forget if you would those golden
kisses all over the cheeks of the meadow, queerly
called dandelions. Henry WardBeecher.
The Young Dandelion
I am a bold fellow
As ever was seen,
With my shield of yellow,
In the grass green.
You may unroot me
From field and from lane,
Trample me, cull me —
I spring up again.
I never flinch, sir,
Wherever I dwell;
Give me an inch, sir,
I'll soon take an ell.
Drive me from garden
In anger and pride,
I'll thrive and harden
By the road-side.
Dinah Mulock Craik.
The Grass
The grass so little has to do, —
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,
And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;
And thread the dew all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine, —
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.
And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulet of pine.
And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away, —
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were the hay! Emily D-fkias^
Toadstools
And the people said when they saw them there,
The fairy umbrellas out in the rain:
(<O Spring has come, so sweet and so fair,
For there are those odd little toadstools again."
G. Packard Du Bois.
There's a thing that grows by the fainting flower,
And springs in the shade of the lady's bower;
The lily shrinks and the rose turns pale,
When they feel its breath in the summer gale,
And the tulip curls its leaves in pride,
And the blue-eyed violet starts aside;
But the lily may flaunt, and the tulip stare,
For. what does the honest toadstool care?
She does not glow in a painted vest,
And she never blooms on the maiden's breast;
But she comes, as the saintly sisters do,
In a modest suit of a Quaker hue.
And, when the stars in the evening skies
Are weeping dew from their gentle eyes,
The toad comes out from his hermit cell,
The tale of his faithful love to tell.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Five little white-heads peeped out of the mold,
When the dew was damp and the night was cold,
And they crowded their way through the soil with pride :
"Hurrah! we are going to be mushrooms!" they
cried.
But the sun came up, and the sun came down,
And the little white -heads were withered and
brown :
Long were their faces, their pride had a fall —
They were nothing but toadstools, after all.
Walter Learned.
£rt fn d&artiettg
Nothing is more completely the child of Art than
a Gar<*en- Sir Walter Scott.
It is said that a garden should always be considered
simply and wholly as a work of art, and should not
be made to look like Nature. That is true enough.
Nothing, indeed, can be in worse taste than the land-
scape-gardener's imitations of Nature. But there is
another plan. If your garden be large enough you
can let Nature have her own way in certain parts of
it. This takes time, but the result is eminently de-
%htfuL George Milner.
Our British gardeners, on the contrary, instead
of humouring nature, love to deviate from it as much
as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes, and pyr-
amids. We see the marks of the scissors upon every
plant and bush. I do not know whether I am singu-
lar in my opinion, but for my own part, I would
rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and dif-
fusion of boughs and branches, than when it is thus
cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure, and can-
not but fancy that an orchard in flower looks infi-
nitely more delightful than all the little labyrinths of
the most finished parterre. Joseph
To begin, then, we find flower-beds habitually
considered too much as mere masses of colour, instead
of an assemblage of living beings. The only thought
is to delight the eye by the utmost possible splendour.
When we walk in our public gardens everything
seems tending to distract the attention from the sep-
arate plants, and to make us look at them only with
regard to their united effect. Forbes WatsQn^
As to colour in gardens. Flowers in masses are
mighty strong colour, and if not used with a great deal
of caution are very destructive to pleasure in gar-
dening. On the whole, I think the best and safest
plan 'is to mix up your flowers, and rather eschew
great masses of colour — in combination I mean.
William Morris.
Variations of flowers are like variations in music,
often beautiful as such, but almost always inferior to
the theme on which they are founded — the original
air. And the rule holds good in beds of flowers, if
they be not very large, or in any other small assem-
blage of them. Nay, the largest bed will look well
if of one beautiful colour; while the most beautiful
varieties may be inharmoniously mixed up.
Leigh Hunt,
tfountafng
One of the greatest ornaments to a garden is a
fountain, but many fountains are curiously ineffective.
A fountain is mo$t beautiful when it leaps high
into the air, and you can see it against a background
of green foliage. To place a fountain among low
flower-beds, and then to substitute small fancy jets
that take the shape of a cup, or trickle over into a
basin of gold-fish, or toy with a gilded ball, is to do
all that is possible to degrade it. The real charm of
a fountain is, when you come upon it in some little
grassy glade of the "pleasaunce" where it seems as
though it sought, in the strong rush of its waters, to
vie with the tall boles of the forest-trees that sur-
round it.
Such was the fountain in Leigh Hunt's Story of
Rimini, which shot up " beneath a shade of darksome
pines" —
"And 'twixt their shafts you saw the water bright,
Which through the tops glimmered with show'ring light."
Henry A. Bright.
For Fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Re-
freshment, but Pools mar all and make the Garden
unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs. Fountains
I intend to be of two Natures: the one that sprinkleth
or spouteth water, the other a fair Receipt of Water,
of some thirty or forty foot square, but without Fish,
or Slime, or Mud.
Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam).
It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens.
Why is it almost everywhere banished? If its busi-
ness use be suspended by more elaborate inventions,
its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its
continuance. It spoke of moderate labors, of pleas-
ures not protracted after sunset, of temperance and
good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horo-
logue of the first world. Adam could scarce have
missed it in Paradise. The "shepherd carved it out
quaintly in the sun," and turning philosopher by the
very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touch-
ing than tombstones. c, , , ,
'Tis an old dial with many a stain:
In Summer crowned with drifting orchard
bloom,
Tricked in the Autumn with the yellow rain,
And white in Winter like a marble tomb.
And round about its gray, time-eaten brow
Lean letters speak — a worn and shattered
row: —
"I am a Shade — a Shadowe, too, arte thou.
I mark the Time. Saye! Gossip! Dost thou
soe?" . ,. n ,
Austin Dobson,
Sun-Dial Mottoes
A clock the time may wrongly tell,
I, never, if the sun shines well.
Old English.
Let others tell of storms and showers,
I'll only count your sunny hours.
Sun- dial at Sandringham,
I count none but sunny hours,
Be the day weary, be the day long,
Soon it shall ring to even song.
What's the Time o' the Day?
Time is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is
Eternity.
Motto for a Sun-dial by Henry van Dyke.
A Garden of the Sun
* * * A small level lawn in the centre of which
stood the sun-dial acting as the hub to a large wheel-
shaped flower bed, or, rather, group of beds, as the
wide spokes, each of a different but harmonizing
colour, were separated by narrow grass walks.
A similar walk circled the spokes and was bounded
in turn by a circular bed that might be called the
tire of the wheel, and divided the grass walk into
four in order that one might get to the centre with-
out walking through the outer bed.
Four graceful wing-shaped beds filled the corners
of the grass plot, which by actual measurement
proved to be forty feet square.
This plateau was on three sides enough higher
than the surrounding ground to allow an arbitrary
grass slope of two feet, with a couple of steps where
the long walk joined it. * * * It is to contain only
the perishable summer flowers, really flowers of the
sun, and fit companions of the sun-dial.
" The Garden of a Commuter's Wife."
(Mabel Osgood Wright.)
A Floral Sun-Dial
How well the skilful gardener drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new,
, When from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant Zodiac run ;
And as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we !
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers !
Andrew Marvell.
Saying all one feels and thinks
In clever daffodils and pinks;
In puns of tulips ; and in phrases
Charming for their truth, of daisies
Uttering as well as silence may,
The sweetest words the sweetest way.
Leigh Hunt.
In these the alphabet
Of flowers; how they devisedly being set
And bound up, might with speechless secrecy
Deliver errands mutely and mutually. ~ hn
1
an& dffaraeng
As orchards to men, so are flowers and herbs to
women. Indeed the garden appears celibate, as
does the house, without womanly hands to plant
and care for it. Amos Bronson
In writing of her life near Albany, in the middle
of the eighteenth century, Mrs. Anne Grant has
left the?ibllowing record of the Dutch vrouws: —
"The care of plants such as needed peculiar
care or skill to rear them, was the female province.
Every one in town or country had a garden. Into
this garden no foot of man intruded after it was dug
in the Spring. I think I see yet what I have so
often beheld — a respectabk mistress of a family
going out to her garden, on an April morning, with
her great calash, her little painted basket of seeds,
and her rake over her shoulder to her garden of
labours. A woman in very easy circumstances and
abundantly gentle in form and manners would sow
and plant and rake incessantly."
Good huswives provide, ere an sickness do come,
Of sundrie good things in house to have some :
Good aqua composita, vinegar tart,
Rose water and treacle to comfort the heart,
Good herbes in the garden for agues that burn,
That over strong heat to good temper turn.
Thomas Tusser.
My garden was a plain vineyard when it came
into my hands not two years ago, and it is with a
small expense, turned into a garden that (apart from
the advantages of the climate) I like better than
that of Kensington. The Italian vineyards are not
planted like those in France, but in clumps, fastened
to trees planted in equal ranks (commonly fruit trees),
and continued in festoons from one to the other,
which I have turned into covered galleries of shade,
that I can walk in the heat without being incom-
moded by it.
I have made a dining-room of verdure, capable
of holding a table of twenty covers; the whole
ground is 317 feet in length, and 200 in breadth.
You see it is far from large ; but so prettily disposed
(though I say it) that I never saw a more agreeable
rustic garden, abounding with all sorts of fruit, and
producing a variety of wines.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
(A Letter, dated Louvere, July loth, 1753.)
Any book I see advertised that treats of Gardens
I immediately buy. (( Thg So/.(ary Summgr,,
(Countess von Arnim.}
ana
Books Versus Gardens
Bookes (Courteous Reader) may rightly be
compared to Gardens ; Wherein, let the painfull
Gardiner expresse never so much care and diligent
endeavor ; yet among the very fairest, sweetest and
freshest Flowers, as also Plants of most precious
Vertue ; ill savouring and stinking weeds, fit for no
use but the fire or mucke-hill, will spring and sprout
up. So fareth it with Bookes of the very best qual-
ity ; let the Author bee never so indulgent, and the
Printer vigilant; yet both may misse their ayme, by
the escape of Errors and Mistakes, either in sense
or matter, the one fault by a ragged Written Copy ;
and the other through want of wary Correction.
Giovanni Boccaccio.
1 write in a nook that I call my boudoir; it is
a summer-house not bigger than a sedan-chair; the
door of it opens into the garden that is now crowded
with pinks, roses and honeysuckles, and the window
into my neighbour's orchard. It formerly served
an apothecary as a smoking-room; at present, how-
ever, it is dedicated to sublimer uses.
x_ William Cotoper.
A Garden of Books
Where 'may one indulge in day-dreams, if not
in a Garden! In the very centre of the garden,
away from house or cottage, but united to it by a
pleached alley or pergola of vines or roses, an oc-
tagonal book-tower like Montaigne's rises upon
arches forming an arbour of scented shade. Between
the book-shelves, windows at every angle," as in
Pliny's Villa library, opening upon a broad gallery
supported by pillars of "faire carpenter's work,"
round which cluster flowering creepers, follow the
course of the sun in its play upon the landscape.
" Last stage of all," a glass dome gives gaze upon
the stars by night and the clouds by day. * * *
And in this Garden of Books — sui et amicorum,
would pass the coloured days and the white nights,
" not in quite blank forgetfulness, but in continuous
dreaming, only half-veiled by sleep."
Albert Forbes Sieveking.
I like a writer who is original enough to water
his garden with quotations, without fear of being
drowned out. H(nry van Dykg
What's in a Name?
What's in a name ? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Shakespeare.
The flower-names are often little poems in
themselves. Those long uncouth names, dreaded
in botany, hide Nature-meanings in them. Helio-
trope is " she who turns to the sun ;" * * * Nastur-
tium carries its meaning of "bent-nose" in its face;
Geranium is " crane's-bill," — let the seed-vessel grow
and it will tell the reason why ; Saxifrage is " rock-
cleaver," named so from its birthplace in the clefts;
Anemone is "wind-flower." These, you see, were
but simple heart and eye names to the Greeks or
Romans, just as we call the pets heart's-ease, day's
eye, morning-glory, honeysuckle, mignonette. Each
people has its !own. Other flower-names come
down to us impearled with myth and story, — the
hyacinth, narcissus, Solomon's seal, arethusa, the
passion flower. mlliam c
"The Frenchman's Darling": —
It was Cowper who gave this now common name to
the Mignonette.
Forget-Me-Not
When to the flowers — so beautiful —
The Father gave a name,
Back came a little blue-eyed one
(All timidly it came)
And standing at its Father's feet,
And gazing in His face —
It said in low and trembling tones,
With sweet and gentle grace,
" Dear God, the name thou gavest me
Alas ! I have forgot."
Then kindly looked the Father down,
And said, " Forget-me-not. " Unknown,
We may fancy that Eve — herself the first rose
of womanhood — gave its name among the roses of
Eden, and we like to think that as Adam gave names
to all cattle, Eve tried her syllables upon the flowers.
Her joy in existence and love must have blossomed
easily into words, as she emphasized one after
another of them, — was it love or praise, speech
half asleep, or song half awake? Canda(e wheeltr%
d&ar&en
The chief use of flowers is to illustrate quota-
tions from the poets. Selected
t-
There is probably no famous poet that has not
sealed his fame into a song about some favorite of
the fields. Wordsworth's celandines and daffodils
are noted, and Burns's daisy, and Herbert's rose, and
Emerson's rhodora, and Lowell's dandelion; while
in Chaucer the whole Spring buds and sings, and all
along the lines of Tennyson flowers brush you with
fine touches. mmam c Gaffagff
The flowers are Nature's poems,
In blue and red and gold;
With every change from bud to bloom,
Sweet fantasies unfold.
The trees are Nature's music —
Her living harps are they,
On which the fingers of the wind
Majestic marches play.
Flowers will bloom over and over again in poems,
as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always
old and always new. Why should we be more shy
of repeating ourselves than the Spring be tired of bios-
soms or the night of stars ? QKver Wendgll ^^
Who ever sees a hawthorn or a sweetbrier (the
eglantine) that his thoughts do not, like a bolt of
light, burst through ranks of poets, and ranges of
sparkling conceits which have been born since Eng-
land had a written language, and of which the rose,
the willow, the eglantine, the hawthorn, and other
scores of vines or trees, have been the cause as they
are now and forevermore the suggestions and remem-
brances? Who ever looks upon an oak and does not
think of navies, of storms, of battles on the ocean,
of the noble lyrics of the sea, of English glades, of
the fugitive Charles, the tree-mounted monarch, of
the Herne oak, of parks, and forests of Robin Hood
and his merry men, of old baronial halls with mellow
light streaming through diamond-shaped panes upon
oaken floors, and of carved oaken wainscotings?
Selected.
flotocrg for
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
William Wordsworth.
I pluck the flowers I plucked of old
About my feet — yet fresh and cold
The Buttercups do bend;
The self-same Buttercups they seem,
Thick in the bright-eyed green, and such
As when to me their blissful gleam
Was all earth's gold — how much?
Owen Meredith.
Flowers preach to us if we will hear. s
Christina G. RossettL
Flowers are Love's truest language; they betray
Like the divining-rods of Magi old,
Where precious wealth lies buried ; not of gold,
But love — strong love, that never can decay!
Park Benjamin.
" Pray, love, remember : and there is pansies, that's
for thoughts." Shakespeare.
Of all the bonny buds that blow
In bright or cloudy weather,
Of all the flowers that come and go
The whole twelve moons together,
The little purple pansy brings
Thoughts of the sweetest, saddest things.
Mary E. Bradley.
Heart's-ease ! one could look for half a day
Upon this flower, and shape in fancy out
Full twenty different tales of love and sorrow,
That gave this gentle name. Mary
Great purple pansies, each with snowy heart,
And golden ones with eyes of deepest blue;
Some "freaked with jet," some pure white ones apart,
But all so sweet and fresh with morning dew,
I could not bear to lose them,
I could not help but choose them,
For sweet Content sat singing where they grew.
Selected.
Every-Day Botany
Who doubts there are classes
Of men, like the grasses
And flowers subdivided in many a way ?
You've seen them, I've seen them,
We've jostled between them,
These manifold specimens — day after day.
You've met nettles that sting you,
And roses that fling you
Their exquisite incense from warm, hidden hearts,
And bright morning-glories
That tell their own stories
With round honest faces, rehearsing their parts.
Sometimes an old thistle
Will bluster and bustle,
When chance or necessity leads you his way;
But do not upbraid him —
He's just as God made him;
Perchance some small good he has done in his day.
The poppies think sleeping
Far better than weeping,
And never let worry usurp a good nod ;
They'll laugh and grow fatter
O'er any grave matter,
When sensitive plants would sink under the sod.
The hollyhocks greet you
Wherever they meet you,
With stiffest of bows, or a curt little phrase;
But never a mullein
Was haughty or sullen,
And warm are their hand-shakes, if awkward their
ways.
Ah! never a flower,
Blooming wild or in bower,
But lives in Humanity's flora anew;
May I ask, in conclusion,
'Mid all this confusion,
What flower we shall find if we analyze you?
Katherine H. Perry,
d&arfcen
"The Garden of Autographs"
My garden is a veritable album, and as I wan-
der over our place I find many a dear friend or
happy hour commemorated in it. This little clump
of oxalis, naturalized so prettily in the woods, was
gathered one lovely day when a merry party joined
us in an expedition to the Profile Notch. That
group of lady's-slippers came from the woods of a
dear friend in Vermont. Here are moss-roses from a
magnificent rose-garden in Massachusetts, and there
are seedlings from the home of Longfellow, or wil-
lows rooted from cuttings brought from the South
by Frederick Law Olmsted. Hardly a flower-loving
friend have I who has not left an autograph in plant,
or shrub, or tree in my garden, and in like manner
many a thrifty plant has left my borders for those of
distant friends. Mrj> rheodore Thgmas (Rose
A garden that one makes oneself becomes asso-
ciated with one's personal history, and that of one's
friends interwoven with one's tastes, preferences and
character, and constitutes a sort of unwritten but
withal manifest autobiography. Show me your gar-
den, provided it be your own, and I will tell you
what you are like. Alfred Austin.
€^e JLote of f lottery
" Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps ;
Perennial pleasures plants and wholesome harvests
reaps."
You have heard it said — (and I believe there is
more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass
for a fanciful one) — that flowers only flourish rightly
in the garden of some one who loves them. I know
you would like that to be true ; you would think it
a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into
brighter bloom by a kind look upon them ; nay,
more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer,
but to guard; — if you could bid the black blight
turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare — if you
could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought,
and say to the south wind in frost — "Come, thou
South, and breathe upon my garden that the spices
of it may flow out!" John Rus kin.
As I work among my flowers, I find myself
talking to them, reasoning and remonstrating with
them, and adoring them as if they were human beings.
Cetia Thaxter.
" Thou bearest flowers within Thy hand,
Thou wearest on Thy breast
A flower ; now tell me which of these
Thy flowers Thou lovest best;
Which wilt Thou gather to Thy heart
Beloved above the rest ? "
"Should I not love my flowers,
My flowers that bloom and pine,
Unseen, unsought, unwatched for hours
By any eye but Mine ?
Should I not love my flowers ?
I love my lilies tall,
My marigold with constant eyes,
Each flower that blows, each flower that dies,
To Me, I love them all.
I gather to a heavenly bower
My roses fair and sweet;
I hide within my breast the flower
That grows beside my feet."
Dora Greenwell.
The love of a garden, like love itself, like
charity, never fails. ^ ReynM
of tlje
People whose lives, and those of their parents
before them, have been spent in dingy tenements,
and whose only garden is a rickety soap-box high
up on a fire-escape, share this love, which must have
a plant to tend, with those whose gardens cover
acres and whose plants have been gathered from all
the countries of the world.
How often in summer, when called to town, and
when driving through the squalid streets to the fer-
ries, or riding on the elevated road, one sees these
gardens of the poor! Sometimes they are only a
Geranium or two, or the gay Petunia. Often a tall
Sunflower, or a Tomato plant red with fruit.
These efforts tell of the love of the growing things,
and of the care that makes them live and blossom
against all odds. One feels a thrill of sympathy
with the owners of the plants and wishes that some
day their lot may be cast in happier places, wher
they too may have gardens to tend.
Helen Ruthurford Ely.
Even in the stifling bosom of the Town
A Garden in which nothing thrives has charms
That soothe the rich possessor; much consoled
That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint,
Of nightshade or valerian, grace the wall
He cultivates. mniam
Cowslips, wind your yellow ribbon through the low
green meadow,
Violets in the pasture, put on your hoods of blue;
The children of the poor man have no grand garden
spaces,
They have neither rose nor lily, and they depend on
you.
Make haste, O airy columbine, to trim your scarlet
bonnet,
And stand upon the hillside in beautiful array ;
O darling pink azalea, unfold your lovely blossoms,
Like flakes of sunset vapor, and make the woodland
gay!
Start up in every field, ye hosts of crimson clover;
Scatter gold, O dandelions, along the grassy floor ;
Bring forth your rosy whorls, O wild briar in the
hedges ;
O dainty daisies, come and fill the gardens of the poor !
Mary Frances Butts.
Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary
humanity ; children love them ; tender, contented,
ordinary people love them. They are the cottager's
treasure; and in the crowded town mark, as with
a little fragment of rainbow, the windows of the
little workers in whose heart rests the covenant of
peace.
John Ruskin.
Clje ^meli of a
After ten wearisome weeks of travel across an
unknown sea, to an equally unknown world, the
group of Puritan men and women who were the
founders of Boston neared their Land of Promise ;
and their noble leader, John Winthrop, wrote in his
Journal that "we had now fair Sunshine Weather
and so pleasant a sweet Aire as did much refresh us,
and there came a Smell off the Shore like the Smell
of a Garden."
* * * What must that sweet air from the land have
been to the sea-weary Puritan women on shipboard,
laden to them with its promise of a garden, for I
doubt not every woman bore with her across seas
some little package of seeds and bulbs from her
English home garden ! AKc€ Mgrse
And because the Breath of Flowers is far sweeter
in the Aire (when it comes and goes like the Warb-
ling of Music) than in the hand, therefore nothing
is more fit for that delight than to know what be the
Flowers and Plants that doe best perfume the Aire.
Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam).
The Garden glows,
And 'gainst its walls the city's heart still beats,
And out from it each summer wind that blows
Carries some sweetness to the tired streets !
Margaret Delano1.
Does not the scent of the primrose, the violet
and the cowslip sometimes transport us to the banks
and meads where first we found them, and restore,
though but for a few seconds, the tender grace of a
day that is dead? S. Reynolds Hole.
How sweetly smells the Honeysuckle
In the hush'd night, as if the world were one
Of utter peace and love and gentleness!
Walter Savage Landor.
Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the
human heart feels most powerful emotions in the
night, when it believes itself to be alone and unper-
ceived, so also do the flowers, soft-minded, yet
ashamed, appear to await for concealing darkness,
that they may give themselves wholly up to their
feelings, and breathe them out in sweet odours.
Heinrich Heine.
of tl)e
The flowers of the sea are flowers more in ap-
pearance than in reality. Seen in masses through
the clear water they look like beds of mountain
pinks or fields of fern or hillsides of wild asters,
with moss and ice-plant and cactus growths scattered
between; but the likeness is superficial. The plants
are very different from those known on the earth.
They have no root, they absorb nothing from the
soil, they require neither rain nor air, and some of
them manage to exist with little or no light. There
are no blossoming forms, no leaves, seldom any
fruit ; and while there are growths having a foothold
on the bottom that rise up through a thousand feet
of water to float ball-shaped tangles upon the sur-
face, yet in form they are not at all like trees. The
"trunk" that climbs upward so many feet is no
larger than one's finger, and the bunch of weed at
the surface that makes a sleeping-place for the sea-
otter has nothing like the foliage of the maple or
the blossom of the horse-chestnut.
And what of those plants far down in the sea-
gardens that never feel the push of waves, those
plants that never move or are moved from age to
age? Are they perhaps modeled upon the same
pattern as their cousins near the shore ? By no
means. In the depths where no storm or wave
ruffles the eternal serenity nature is free to expand ;
and there she grows plants of symmetrical designs
with no fear of their accidental destruction. Won-
derful forms she models — crimson weeds with
plumy fronds, purple dulses with lace-like patterns,
iridescent mosses with antlered branches. Countless
algtfj wing-shaped, threaded with lines, cupped and
domed, starred and crossed and circled, are there.
"In the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the
gardens of Nireus,
Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the
palms of the ocean,
Stand in meadows and forests unchanging, un-
fading from decade to decade."
John C. van Dyke.
<0arfcen at
Pink and white and gold
'Mid the waning light,
Stars that first unfold
At the gate of night;
Peeping o'er the pansy beds,
Flashing through the phlox,
A blessing on your bonny heads,
Happy four-o'clocks !
Samuel Minturn Peck.
As children bid the guest good night,
And then reluctant turn,
My flowers raise their pretty lips,
Then put their nightgowns on.
As children caper when they wake,
Merry that it is morn,
My flowers from a hundred cribs
Will peep, and prance again.
Emily Dickinson.
We know they sleep; at eve the Daisy small
Foldeth all up
Her sun-tipp'd rays; and the wave's empress * shuts
Her starlit cup ;
And each fair flower, though some with open eye,
Listens and yields to nature's lullaby.
The nodding Foxglove slumbers on her stalk,
And fan-like ferns
Seem poised still and sleepily, until
The morn returns
With singing birds and beams of rosy light
To bid them dance and frolic in delight.
The drowsy Poppy, who has all the day
Proudly outspread
His scarlet mantle, folds it closely now
Around his head;
And, lull'd by soothing balm that his own leaves distil,
Sleeps while the night-dews fall upon the moonlit hill.
*The Water-lily. Louisa Ann Twamley.
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone ;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad
And the musk of the rose is blown.
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon ;
All night has the casement jessamine stir'd
To the dancers dancing in tune ;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.
* * * * * * *
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one ;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
A Little Song
The sunset in the rosy west
Burned soft and high :
A shore-lark fell like a stone to his nest
In the waving rye,
A wind came over the garden beds
From the dreamy lawn,
The pansies nodded their purple heads,
The poppies began to yawn.
One pansy said: It is only Sleep,
Only his gentle breath:
But a rose lay strewn in a snowy heap,
For the rose it was only death.
Heigho, we've only one life to live,
And only one death to die :
Good-morrow, new world, have you nothing
to give? —
Good-bye, old world, good-bye.
Duncan Campbell Scott.
Flower Dreams
The sleeping earth, with thick white veil,
By winter's hand is covered o'er;
She waits in slumber still and pale,
Till spring awaken her once more.
As without care the weary child
Nestles upon its mother's breast,
So sleep the flowers, earth's children mild,
Close to her frost-bound bosom pressed.
They dream of breezes blowing fair,
Of sunshine and of sparkling dews,
Of fragrant odors sweet and rare,
Of waving woods and springtime hues.
Each dreaming flower lifts up its head
To view the splendor far and near;
When lo! the lovely dream has fled,
And, verily, the spring is here!
Anonymous.
dffat&eng of tye *a>oul
A Garden! — The word is in itself a picture, and
what pictures it reveals ! All through the days of
childhood the garden is our fairy-ground of sweet
enchantment and innocent wonder. From the first
dawn of thought when we learned our simple les-
sons of Eden and its loss, and seemed to see the
thornless garden, watered with clear streams, beauti-
ful with spreading trees, and the train of unnamed
beasts and birds meekly passing before their spotless
lord ; and then beyond ; far onward to that other
garden beloved by the Man of Sorrows, Gethsemane,
where we could never picture the blossoming of roses,
or murmurous hum of summer bees, but only the
sombre garden walks, and One kneeling among the
olives, and dark, heavy drops upon the grass, and
near to this, the Garden of the Sepulchre — in a
dewy dawn-light, angel -haunted. These were our
Gardens of the Soul. ((£ r B» (/^ M^ B^
He that walkes with God can never want a good
walke, and good company. There is no garden well
contrived but that which hath an Enoch's walk in it.
Sir William Waller.
The Garden of Forgiveness
There is a garden, far, oh, far away,
Kept for the souls who sinned and suffered most.
The sword of God forever guards the way,
And round its borders camps a heavenly host.
A gentle wind breathes through the tufted grass,
Rich with the scent of roses in their bloom;
And, with the wind, all sins and sorrows pass,
Leaving a sweet contentment in their room.
Here are no troubles; here are none that weep;
Here come no thoughts of sadness or despair;
But fairest flowers, in fullest beauty, sleep ;
And softest sunlight fills the dreaming air.
The murmurings of fountains, low and sweet,
Forever fill the ear and never cease,
Soothing the silence with a gentle heat,
Like kindly voices speaking words of peace.
And here, forever and forever rest
The weary souls, unburdened of their sin ;
And cursed things are here forgiven and blessed;
And wicked hearts are made all clean within.
Bertrand Shadwell.
The Garden of Rest
Girdled with elms, wherein the loud rooks build,
With dreaming hush of its remoteness filled,
Where every sound that breaks the slumb'rous air
Accentuates the peace that lingers there,
One of God's restful grave-set gardens lies,
Where His flowers sleep till He shall bid them
nse* Edith Nesbit Bland.
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